Danny Amendola is a champion, a leader, a valuable slot receiver who brings a contagious attitude and shiny Super Bowl rings into a Dolphins locker room that hasn’t won a playoff game in 18 years.

Danny Amendola is an aging name with a history of injuries who was a product of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and couldn’t turn down a lifetime-achievement contract to play out his final, lucrative days in the South Florida sun.

It’s never clear as the ink dries in NFL free agency whether you’re playing the odds on a player another team let go or the odds are playing you.

But it’s always so clear afterward, isn’t it?

The Dolphins fear they don’t have the fans’ trust on their side, not after a 6-10 season, not after so many recent March decisions, not when just this week they’ve erased several once-touted signings, from Ndamukong Suh to Lawrence Timmons.

But the power of sports is such that Dolphins fans want to believe so completely in what’s speculation, mystery and value-based hope they’re willing to wave a magic wand to make the scars and sorrows disappear like Suh and Timmons.

Watch what happens now. Over the next six months, hope will get re-inflated. Faith will follow. It’s a rite of spring more than baseball is in South Florida, this idea that tomorrow is forever a place, no matter what yesterday brought.

By the summer, the Dolphins will have smartly re-done their receiving corps, judiciously filled roster holes, created excellent matchups for coach Adam Gase’s offense, fixed their defense, changed their locker-room culture and poured a full vat of hope on the 2018 season.

Never mind that, once the kickoffs start, we’ll see if they’ve made the kind of mistakes of overspending and under-vision that will again become apparent on the scoreboard.

Quarterback Chad Henne possibly returning will get some worked up, considering the former Dolphins starter could be the current Dolphins backup. But wouldn’t he just be insurance in case the Dolphins somehow don’t use a high draft pick on a quarterback?

Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross wrote quarterback Ryan Tannehill a check for $16.7 million on Wednesday, converting most of his 2018 salary into a signing bonus to create $11 million in cap space for the franchise.

Reworking Tannehill’s base salary for this season should provide the Dolphins the...

Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross wrote quarterback Ryan Tannehill a check for $16.7 million on Wednesday, converting most of his 2018 salary into a signing bonus to create $11 million in cap space for the franchise.

Reworking Tannehill’s base salary for this season should provide the Dolphins the...

(Omar Kelly)

Sure, it’s hard to see if the Dolphins have a big-picture blueprint beyond filling holes and re-doing contracts to fill more holes. Don’t most organizations, for instance, find cheaper slot receivers? Wes Welker, Davone Bess and Landry fit that idea even on the Dolphins in recent years.

Still, Dolphins fans took double-delight in stealing a good player from the Patriots’ Bill Belichick, like payback for what he’s taken from the Dolphins all these years.

Except signing Amendola isn’t the same at all. Welker, Larry Izzo and Rob Ninkovich were all 25 when they moved from the Dolphins to the Patriots. The Patriots got their prime years for relatively cheap.

Amendola is 33 this coming season. The Dolphins are paying $8.25 million guaranteed for two seasons of a player who can play a similarly productive role in a similar offensive scheme as the Patriots run.

Here's 10 things you may not have known about new Miami Dolphins receiver Albert Wilson, who signed a three-year, $24 million deal Wednesday.

(Chris Perkins, Keven Lerner)

Or they got a player with a history of injuries who did what anyone would have done when a lot of money was put out there.

We won’t know until September. But until then it will be mostly sunny skies and re-inflating optimism around the Dolphins, just as it is most every offseason no matter how scarred the fan base is.

Bill Parcells had it right. Half your free-agent buys don’t work out. Dolphins fans would take that percentage. Actually, since it’s March, Dolphins fans feel they might do better than that since they’re owed some from previous years.